Page 111 of Be Still My Unbeating Heart

De Luca looked as stunned as Bastian felt. He must not have known about Aunt Agata’s operation, either.

“You monitor the town for vampires?” Bastian asked the shopkeeper.

“I’m not a bigot,” she said. “Everybody is welcome in Vernazza so long as they come in peace. But some bad elements creep in from time to time, and we’re primed to react accordingly. We can’t have a repeat of what happened twenty years ago.”

“Is that how you know everything that’s going on in this town before anybody else?” Whitby asked.

“We keep watch,” Aunt Agata said simply. “All these deaths are by far the worst thing to happen to Vernazza in years. If we could root out the culprit, we’d all rest easy at night.”

Deaths.Right.Bastian tried to get back on track. Tried to remember what they had been talking about before Kerstin’s fangs interrupted everything. But still he heard that insistentthump-thumpcoming from the grove owner’s chest.

“Your heartbeat,” he said.

Kerstin kept one hand raised as she reached into her pocket with the other. She removed her phone and held it up for him to see.

“It plays the sound of a heartbeat on a loop, quiet enough that only vampires can hear. It’s been a good smokescreen over the years.”

Bastian almost laughed at the simplicity of it.

“Why would you do that?” he asked.

“Some of us like our privacy,” Kerstin said, switching off the audio track. “And I’ve never played well with other vampires. They’re not my kind of people.”

Bastian looked at her closer. “I should still have been able to sense it. The scent of a vampire is often distinct. But you seem, well, notnormal, but definitely not dead.”

“I have to admit,” Aunt Agata said, “you had me fooled, and I’m not easy to fool.”

Kerstin looked at the shattered fragments of her olive oil bottle on the ground. “I did tell you that my olive oil is capable of remarkable things. The scent infuses my cells—another smokescreen of sorts. Also, I’m an earth vampire. I suppose that could have something to do with it.”

“Anearthvampire?” De Luca said.

“They tend to live underground,” Whitby explained. “They’re nature-lovers.”

Kerstin smiled. “I do love nature, but I prefer living in a house. Soil does have a habit of, well, clogging you up if you’re in it for too long.”

Bastian’s brain seemed to have fallen out of his skull. He tried to catch hold of a thought, pin it down.

“Let me get this straight. You’re a vampire, but you’re concealing it with a magical olive oil, which enables you to kill and not be discovered.”

“Kill? Oh no, I haven’t drunk blood in years, human or otherwise. My oil keeps me quite satisfied.”

“Ridiculous!” Whitby spat. “You left a dead body in our kitchen!”

“Excuse me?”

Bastian pressed, “Why did you kill the mayor?”

Kerstin’s eyes widened. “Themayor is dead?”

“There’s no point in playing innocent anymore,” Bastian said. “Her body was right there in the kitchen, surrounded by all your occult stuff.”

Kerstin took out a third bottle and gulped down a mouthful.

“The apartment was empty when I broke in,” she said. “There was no body. Certainly not the mayor’s.”

“How stupid do you think we are?” Whitby demanded. “You claimed your latest victim and you made sure Bastian took the fall.”

“I admit that I broke into your apartment, but you have to understand, I only did this to protect my own neck.”